How to optimize Magento performance

Athlete Theme installation

3rd-party Extensions

Will my extension work with your theme?

Our theme (and any other custom theme) isn't compatible with all third-party extensions by default. You often (not always) need to customize the extension to make it work properly with your theme. It's impossible for theme author to make the theme compatible with all existing extensions. Only default Magento theme is compatible with all third-party extensions, because all extensions are designed to work with default Magento theme.

Most common case is a conflict, when extension and theme override the same Magento template file. In such cases you need to customize conflict template and merge extension into theme template

Extensions Installation

You need to check if an extension use base/default theme - in doing so you are utilising the
fallback
hierarchy Magento provides, allowing your theme to be portable and easy to extend by clients wishing to do so.

If it use default/default theme - you will need to copy extension layout files and templates into
athlete/default theme.

Another common problem is lack of time limit. To fix it, you need to edit index.php. Insert set_time_limit(0); in the beginnig of index.php

<?php
set_time_limit(0);

I AM GETTING FATAL PHP ERROR

Usually php fatal error is not theme related issue. Best solution is to search on magento forums or google with exact error string.

I GET JS ERROR. AJAX NOT WORKING ETC

The problem is that some ( or several ) of plugins installed in your system include another version of jquery library after all our libraries were loaded. It override jQuery object with all jquery libraries that was loaded by our theme.

Check plugin files and comment out jquery. It should be loaded via layout xml.
Usually layout files located in app/design/frontend/base/default/layout/ or app/design/frontend/default/default/layout

magento basics

STORE VIEWS AND DIFFERENT CONFIGURATION SCOPES

Current Configuration Scope list, at the top of the left Configuration panel, defines
the range in which the configuration settings are applied. Some configuration settings apply
globally to everything in the site, while others are more limited in scope. If you
have multiple stores on your website, you can change the scope and make different
configurations settings for each store.

Scope of the configuration is shown in [square brackets] to the right of the setting.
To set current configuration scope:

From the Admin panel, select System > Configuration.
In the upper-left Current Configuration Scope list, choose scope of the settings
you want to make.
To see current store configuration, click Manage Stores.

Scope Settings

Default Configuration - Configuration at the Default level applies to all websites if a website or store specific value is not set.

Main Website - Configuration at Main Website scope, like Default, applies across all stores and store views. Certain settings, like Table Rates, can be made only with a Main Website scope.

Main Store - Configuration at Store scope applies only to the specific store

Storeview (English, Spanish, etc) - Store views are used to configure language or country specific settings.

empty navigation

The first level of categories are used for the STORE ROOTS only, and are NOT shown in
the top navigation.

Categories from the 2nd level and downward are shown in that store's top navigation.
If your categories do not show up in your store, they are most likely NOT correctly
assigned to the root category for the store.

You just need to define root category for your store. If you do not create any store,
place all categories under default category

If you plan to update css and/or images: Create new folder in skin/frontend/athlete/. For
example: skin/frontend/athlete/custom

Copy files you want to update from app/design/frontend/athlete/custom
to appropriate folder in new theme

How to switch to your custom subtheme?

Login to admin

Go to System > Configuration > Design. Open "Themes" section

In most cases, if the "package" is set in the Current Package field above, all these fields can remain
blank. Magento will go to the default directory in the "package" directory to find the customized files.

If you want a theme variant of your "package" to be the default theme, the easiest way to change your
theme is to enter your theme variant name in the “Default” field in this section, leaving all other
options in this section blank. For example, if you want your “custom” theme to be the default theme
for the website, enter “custom” in the default field here.

You can also mix and match components from various themes using the other fields in this section.
For example, if you want to use the CSS from the “custom_2” theme with your custom theme, enter
“custom_2” in the “Skin (images/css)” option box and leave the default box set to “custom”.

There are 3 important parameters to support retina screens.
1. Width & Height
2. class="retina"

It is very important for an image to have these 3 parameters. Width and height should be equal to dimensions of
an image for regular screens. Class="retina" define that this image should be reloaded for retina

When you upload a new logo you will need to upload 2 images:your_logo.png - normal size image for regular screensyour_logo_2x.png - double size image for retina screens
Please note that a retina image has a different file name - your_logo_2x - you should add this to original image name

You need to select an image for regular screen and insert the content textarea

HOW TO MARK PRODUCT AS "NEW" OR "SALE" ?

To mark product as "New" do following steps:

1. Go to Catalog > Manage Products and select product.

2. In General tab you will find two fields: Set Product as New from Date
and Set Product as New to Date. Fill them and press save.

3. If you use caching go to System > Index management and reindex data.
After that go to System > Cache management.
Select all items, select disable in actions and click submit.

To mark product as "Sale" do following steps:

1. Go to Catalog > Manage Products and select product.

2. In Price tab fill following fields: Special price, Special price from Date
and Special price to Date

3. If you use caching go to System > Index management and reindex data.
After that go to System > Cache management.
Select all items, select disable in actions and click submit.

theme skins

Our theme comes with quickstart package. It is exact copy of our preview and contain 9 theme styles with all of the static blocks and pages. So you can install it as a guide i.e. on your localhost. But if, for some reason, you can't do it and want to make you're clean installation looks like one of our theme previews, here is the screenshots of specific theme preview settings: